


a quiet scene

by Imprise



Series: Second Visions [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Extended Scene, Gen, M/M, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-18 00:16:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9353243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imprise/pseuds/Imprise
Summary: Sherlock and John have a few words after his extraction from the well.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wordstrings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordstrings/gifts).



> I wouldn't have written this piece if it hadn't been for Katie's Twitter prompt, so of course the work belongs to her.

He touched his hands, his feet, his nostrils. They were quiet and blue with cold. Sherlock saw the taut blotches on John's skin, they reminded him of little islands; he wanted to speak to John in a larger way in the darkness. He could feel the men milling behind him, buzzing animatedly like animals. John was too precious to be caught out like this.

“You don't look surprised.” His voice didn't shake.

Sherlock blinked. “Surprised?”

“That you saved me.” John rubbed a numb arm under his towel. “Getting a bit old, isn't it?”

“I saved you?” He shook his head, slowly, wonder creeping out through his skin again like hot water. “John, I've done anything but all these years.”

“I've said some bad things.”

Sherlock recognized his soldier-stiff shoulders, but didn't quite understand why they were there. Perhaps it was the well experience. He'd found his statement unexpected – John was anything but timid – John had lost his wife, and Sherlock had let him. Now he looked him over with his eyes sliding out of focus, wondering what he was thinking, what he wasn't saying, what Sherlock should have said with a gun to his head in Sherrinford under those cold white lights. Time slurred on over his skin.

“You had a right to say them.” Sherlock bit down, then went on quickly. “You were going to die in the well, John.”

“Yeah, so I gathered.”

He fought the urge to dismiss this. “She thought you were my best friend.”

“Aren't I?”

“No,” he said quietly. John's mouth quirked terribly. “I was going to shoot Mycroft.”

“You don't like Mycroft.”

“You're missing the point,” Sherlock said, voice growing harder. “You were there. When Eurus made me tell Molly I loved her. You were watching.”

“I'm not seeing the connection here.”

“There was never a choice.” The words scraped out of his throat like stones. “Between you and my brother, not for a second, not ever. There never will be, John.”

“That's not reasonable. You know it isn't.” John's eyes had grown strange in the distant light.

“Well, I am the emotional one in the family.” It was bothering him, the way John wouldn't understand, it made him wish he'd said something more open when he'd spoken into John's ear: _Don't let her distract you._ It would be something like _you've been distracting me all these years. I'm going to hold your sorry arms to my tight chin until you burn. Look, I goddamn died without you, I've died too many times to count, John you're a marvel I'm getting you out of here alive._ He hadn't even touched him.

“You keep doing that,” John said finally, looking over Sherlock's sharp irises. “Killing yourself in front of me.”

“I never actually die,” he said, bemused.

“It doesn't matter if I'm alive when you aren't.” The words sank into him like mercury. “You shooting yourself in there wouldn't have done me any favors.”

“John, I'm not dead,” Sherlock said slowly.

“Well, you meant to be, didn't you?” John was speaking more loudly now. “Next time –”

“ _John_ –”

“ _Next time,_ ” he said forcefully, “don't leave me behind.”

“That would be completely without purpose if I were to survive. I do not function without you.” Sherlock's mind whirred, coming up with countless scenarios of John's absence. _That chair's never going to be occupied again, the chair's gone it's exploded I've problems with cases. One dark eye grows large in the still night, pupil shot wide as the sun rises. There are many ways to die but not if you live for John Watson, your life weighs heavy against his golden skin now he's gone; the small box rests quiet on the mantelpiece, I can never use its contents again._ He exhaled suddenly as another thought occured to him. “John, you have a _daughter._ ”

They stood in silence for a second. John let out a ravaged breath. “I _forgot_.”

Their bodies crashed together in the odd darkness, Sherlock's hand coming down between John's shoulder blades in awe, crushing his hard chest into the cramped silence of his own. He could have been telling John it was normal, that he was in shock with well-water still running over his eyelids; it was natural, perfectly understandable, it made Sherlock want to stop moving forever. He could have told him any part of this. Instead he curled one long hand into John's skull and said quietly, “I would like to live with your baby.”

“Just her?” John's voice was muffled by his coat, and Sherlock smiled into his ear. “I can't leave Rosie.”

“Well then, I guess you'll just have to stay with us as well.” He wasn't teasing. His fingers tightened against John's neck and scapulae, feeling their shape and aliveness over and over until John thawed. He would do it until morning if allowed to. His mouth hovered over John's temple.

They broke apart. Sherlock felt acutely something drop off between them in the hot night, his touch lingering on a waist and elbow. Baker Street would be quieter at this hour, their flat mangled with heat and bent open into the shadows: It would need time to be repaired. He looked down at John's profile in the half-light, felt the dim burn of his solid presence grow large inside him, the gentle newness of parenthood crowding his eyelids. He would need time to tell him this. They had nothing else but time.

 

 


End file.
